


Light from dying embers

by SnowHeart



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, And by Alternative Universe I mean mine, Depression, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Pining, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, not a happy one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:56:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7253386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowHeart/pseuds/SnowHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares, he can cope with. It’s so much harder when you’re living one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light from dying embers

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm not really sure why I'm posting this (or even why I wrote it tbh) except that I thought it might help. Apparently that's what I do now, throw my crap at the founding fathers. Who knew?
> 
> Major triggers for depression, suicide, some homophobia (though Alex doesn't think so) and all round crapiness. If you want me to tag or put up warnings for anything else, please let me know.
> 
> Title is from Lin's acceptance speech at the Tonys. You know the one.

“Well, you know what they say. One in every ten. So who is it, guys?”

Charles laughs, and the rest of the boys with him. Alex smiles, hoping it’s more convincing that it feels. He knows his friends didn't mean anything by it, not really, that he should stop being so sensitive and just get over himself already. It’s just a little hard to do when he’s slowly coming to the realisation that he will never be okay with himself.

“Can you imagine, though? If one of us was gay?” Charles continues. “I’m not saying I’m against it or anything, it’s just such a weird thought!”

“Yeah! I mean, I walk around in a towel. I’d be so uncomfortable!” adds Benjamin, to murmurs of agreement. Alex keeps his mouth shut. His friends aren’t bad people, and he loves spending time with them. There’s no way that they could know that every word, every shared joke, is like a knife to his chest. He’s just going to have to live with the fact that you can’t be bisexual at a boarding school and keep your friends.

Sometimes, when they’re all hanging out in the tv room or in someone’s dorm he imagines it. What would happen if he just stood up and told them the truth. Sure, they would be supportive on the outside. They would tell him they were proud of him, make a show of demonstrating just how accepting they are. But they would never quite look at him in the same way again. The whispers and the sideways looks would follow him for ever, and whatever friendships he’s managed to make would be lost. It’s better by far to carry on lying. To carry on hiding. To sit quietly and pretend to agree and hope the conversation moves on before you break inside.

\--

It feels wrong. It’s a near constant itch, a constant weight of guilt that’s always present. _I’m a liar_ , he thinks to himself a hundred times a day. He looks at his friends and silently apologises that he’s not the person they think he is. Apologises for the fact that they would probably hate him if they knew the truth. Call him a perv and a freak and a weirdo. But all behind his back. And that’s almost worse.

\--

It’s easiest when he can bury himself in his work. Despite himself he secretly finds himself looking forward to exam time, to the weeks when he can lock himself in his room and think about nothing but statistics or cell structure for hours at a time. It becomes easier to stay up until midnight, until one, until two, because then he doesn't have to sleep either. Or rather, doesn't have to try and fail to sleep because it’s become something of a routine now, to lie in bed for hours and stare at the dark ceiling, simultaneously desperate for sleep to come and praying it won’t. Benjamin calls him up on it once, asks why he doesn't take sleeping pills or something. He shrugs of the question, not telling him that he doesn't trust himself with them. Loosing himself in the work is the better option by far.

It’s history Alex loves most of all. He’s good at history, he understands it, it’s one of the few things he feels he can make something of. The syllabus is dry and boring, but that doesn't matter when there’s a whole library to work his way through, shelves piled high with every book imaginable. (It’s one of the only times he’s grateful that he was sent to this posh fucking boarding school where he never belonged.) He works for his tests and his classwork, and in the meantime writes essays on the slave trade and the evolution of political ideas. It’s difficult stuff, but that’s good. It means he doesn't have the brain-space to think about anything else.

Once, on the phone to his father, he mentions his ideas for the coursework he’s been set. They’ve been given the freedom to write about anything they want, and he wants to do something on the history of protest, and pride movements. Changing attitudes to race maybe, or LGBT rights. There’s a silence down the other end of the phone, and then his father sighs.

“I wouldn’t, Alex. No one’s going to take you seriously if you write about stuff like that. Why do you even want to, anyway?”

He curses internally, and makes up some rubbish about a documentary he’s watched. Dammit, that was close. And incredibly stupid. What had he even been thinking, bringing it up around his father? _It_ is what he starts to think of it as in his head, the big _it_ , so wrong he can’t even use it’s name in the safety of his thoughts. Because his thoughts aren’t safe. Thoughts lead to ideas, and ideas lead to stupid mistakes, and stupid mistakes lead to never having any friends ever again, loosing the respect of your family and anything you ever thought you had. So it stays as _it_.

\--

This is slowly breaking him, not that Alex acknowledges it. He’s managing maybe four hours sleep on a good night, watching every word that comes out his mouth and schooling every action and reaction he does. It’s exhausting, constantly being afraid you’re going to trip up, and his state just makes it more likely that he will. Which only make him more afraid, so sleep less, so be in even worse shape by the next night. He’s starting to loose track of things, of time. The grip he has on his life is only as strong as the fingertips which are slowly loosing the will to hold on.

\--

And it’s not like he’s unhappy, not all the time. He has his friends. He has his work. There are days when everything goes his way, and he wonders what he was ever worried about. They play soccer in the sports hall and tease each other and make plans for the summer, and he enjoys it. He’s so lucky to be at such a good school, as his father keeps reminding him, and he’s honestly happy for a lot of the time.

It’s just the days when he’s not. They days when he thinks he’s going to be crushed under the weight of all that’s wrong with him. The nights filled with fear when he sobs into his pillow so as not to wake his roommates. They never mention it in the prospectuses, but it’s a skill you learn pretty damn well when you go to boarding school, the art of crying silently.

\--

There’s a boy in his year, John Laurens, who he hopes is his friend. He is fiery and fearless and beautiful, and he doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks of him. His arguments with his father are something of a legend around the school, and John takes it all him his stride. He sits next to Alex in biology, and is forever lending him a pen or some paper because Alex, for all his brains, can’t seem to remember the basics. John never seems to mind, just hands then over with a raised eyebrow and carries on ignoring the teacher, sketching in the margins of his books. Alex tries not to stare, at the boy or his drawings, but it’s not easy. He’s an amazing artist, and, well, the freckles scattered across his face are a work of art in their own right.

\--

Alex goes home for the holidays, and tries to feel like he belongs there instead. It doesn't work.

\--

“What do you want to do when you get out of here?” Benjamin asks one day, over lunch. It’s a scary prospect, no matter how much everyone claims they can’t wait to be done with school. Some have big plans. Charles wants to go into the army, and Alex privately thinks he will do very well there. Someone with that much confidence and charisma could make it all the way to a general one day. Either that or he’d get shot by one of his own men in the first week. Others don’t have a clue. Alex is in the latter group. That doesn't mean he has dreams, though. He’s going to make something of his life, use it to make a difference and leave a mark, he just doesn't know how. He doesn't remember John joining in with the conversation, but the next week while Mr. Mercer is droning on about the structure of the heart, John tells him he wants to go to art college. It’s the source of the latest blow-up between him and his father apparently; Henry Laurens always wanted his son to go to law school, and doesn't think that drawing is a worthy use of his son’s time. Alex isn't sure exactly why John’s telling him this - it’s not like they’re close friends, after all, but later that night he finds himself smiling at the memory of John describing exactly where he had told his father to stick it.

Alex doesn't kid himself into thinking that he’s in love, or that anything could ever happen between the two of them, but he holds the memory close to his chest all the same.

\--

They’re on a bus coming back from a soccer match when Angelica Schuyler asks Alex who he’s going to the Valentines Day Ball with. It’s a stupid school tradition that the girls have to ask the boys to it, and Alex has always privately hated the whole thing. It’s not that he doesn't get asked, he just hates the pressure it puts on everyone to couple up and think themselves worthless if they don’t have a date. He’s expecting Angleica to ask him when he tells her that he’s currently dateless, and he he knows they’d have a good time together. She’s captain of the soccer team, fiercly loyal, and as fun as she is drop-dead gorgeous. But Angelica just smiles and disappears back to her own seat before he can say anything else, and two days later it’s her sister who asks if he wants to be her date, blushing furiously as she does so. Alex accepts instantly - Eliza is possibly the nicest person he’s ever met, and her smile as he says “It’s a date,” almost makes up for the fact that he won’t be going with a certain freckled boy instead. Almost.

The music is playing too loudly from cheep speakers, and everyone is crowded into the school hall, shuffling awkwardly to the rhythm. Eliza looks nothing short of beautiful, and despite his general hatred for the whole thing, Alex is having a good time, despite himself. Maybe that’s why it takes him so long to notice that someone is missing from the crowd. “Where’s John?” he asks over the music, and Eliza shrugs in response. “No idea. Oh, let’s go dance to this one! It’s my favourite song!”

She pulls him into the middle of the dance-floor, and by the end of the night they are kissing behind the fire exit. For a minute at least, Alex isn't drowning in his own secrets or struggling not to fall off the edge of the spinning world. His mind is full of dark eyes and soft hair running through his fingers, and John Laurens is forgotten.

By the end of the week, Alex finds himself somehow dating Eliza, and John is still nowhere to be found. Someone says that he’s had to go home suddenly, and it’s all Alex can do not to glance at the empty seat on his right in biology. It’s only later, much later after the world has crumbled around him, that Alex finds out why John had to go home.

\--

Eliza is awesome, she really is, and Alex loves spending time with her. Between hanging out with her and not letting up on the amount of work he’s taking on, Alex barely has any time to think any more, and while that should be a good thing, it just means that the thoughts eat away into his sleep even more. The inside of his own head is a scary place to live. It’s not Eliza’s fault that he never tells her about the monsters at the foot of his bed, about the dark shadow that sits on his shoulder no matter how hard he tries to shake it.

It’s not Eliza’s fault that Alex breaks everything he touches, and every moment he spends with her is overshadowed by the fear that he will inevitably break her too. There’s a second _it_ in his life now, this one even worse than the first. He hopes, someday, he might tell someone that he’s bi without fear of loosing them. He will never tell anybody about the shadows.

\--

Easter approaches, and Alex can’t bare the idea of going home. Sure, he never really fit in at this posh school full of posh idiots who think they’re so much better than anyone else, but at least he has friends here. At least he can pretend he belongs. At home, there is no pretending. John is back in lessons one morning without any announcement or ceremony. He just slips into his seat and slides Alex a pen before he can ask for one. He doesn't offer any explanation for his absence and Alex doesn't demand one. He wonders, though, about the dark rings under John’s eyes, almost as dark as his own.

\--

Angelica slaps him in front of the whole school in the cafeteria, and Alex doesn't do anything to avoid the blow. He knows he deserves it. As far as she’s concerned, he just dumped her sister and broke her heart. Alex wishes he could tell her how it was precisely because he didn't want to break her heart that he ended things with her before Eliza could make the mistake of falling in love with him, but that doesn't make the pain on her face when he told her he was ending it any easier to manage. _She was going to hate you sooner or later,_ he reminds himself. _Might as well make it sooner._

\--

He can’t do this. Alex has always known it deep down, but it is only now that he acknowledges the thought to himself. He knows he’s not going to make it another two and a half years in this place. Not having to spend every day hiding who he is out of fear of loosing his friends, not when he’s faced with the evidence of his own worthlessness every day in the glares from the Schuyler sisters. He’ll make his own way out, the only way that he can. Funnily enough, the idea of it doesn't scare him like it used to. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day soon he will take matters into his own hands and end it for good. It’s an only comforting thought, the single certainty in a life spent lost at sea. The knowledge grounds him, a secret all to himself. Soon.

\--

The days grow longer, and Alex wonders if he is strong enough to make it to the summer. He almost hopes not; the idea of endless weeks at home makes the insides of his wrists itch in a way that has become all too familiar. Instead, he throws himself back into his work with a passion. Mr Washington, by far his favourite history teacher and also his personal tutor has set him a particularly difficult essay on revolutions in the political economy. It’s fascinating stuff, and Alex sinks easily into obsessing over it, grateful for the distraction. He spends his free time in the library or hunched over his laptop, writing notes in classes when he should be working.

It seems he’s not the only one distracted in biology that day. John isn't paying any attention as normal, but his paper is free from the usual drawings, pen capped and away in his pocket.

“You okay?” Alex asks him absently, and he’s so caught up in the research he’s doing that he doesn't notice the pause before John nods, the far away look in his eyes. He just carries on working, and when John calls his name at the end of class, Alex is so focused on the ideas that he wants to go and talk to Washington about that he doesn't hear him, just barrels straight out of the room. It’s a moment he will replay over and over in his mind in the coming months.

\--

It’s Washington who tells them. Washington, who seems to have aged ten years in the space of a day, who calls the boys into his office and tells them to shut the door behind them and sit down. Washington who’s voice cracks as he tells them how there has been a tragic accident, and they have lost a member of their year-group. John Laurens died last night.

He explains how his door will always be open in the days to come, how lessons have been cancelled to give them time to process the news. Alex doesn't hear a word of it. He lets the noise wash over him, staring numbly at the floor. He doesn't feel sad. He doesn't feel pain or heartbreak. He doesn't feel anything at all. Only when Alex learns the truth does the sorrow and guilt hit him like a freight train. And it doesn't take long for the truth to come out. It wasn't an accident that killed John. It was his own hands, and a length of rope.

\--

He hates John, Alex decides. Hates him for putting him, and all Alex’s friends through so much grief and pain (It’s when he see’s Eliza’s tear-stained face that he first curses the boy for doing that to her.) He hates him for throwing away his future, his gifts with a pencil and the fire of his spirit. Hates that he will never see his smile again. But most of all, he hates that John took Alex’s escape route away from him. Because he can never do it now, not when he’s seen the hurt it causes to those around him. Alex holds Eliza whiles she cries and knows that he will never take his own life because he can never put his friends through this.

But mostly he hates himself, more than he ever did before. Hates that he didn't spot the signs and that he let down his friend so entirely. Hates that he is still here and John is gone when, if there was any justice in the world it should have been the other way round. John Laurens was worth a hundred of him, and he will never be able to make up for it, no matter the fact that Alex knows now he will spend the rest of his life trying to. Hates the tiny part of him that he can’t pretend isn't there, that is so damn grateful that John killed himself, because it means that Alex didn’t. He would trade places with John in a heartbeat but there’s no denying the shard of his mind that is so thankful to be alive. Sometimes Alex wonders if that makes him a monster. Other times he thinks that its the only bit of him that still feels human.

\--

It gets, not _better_ as such, but the world turns on. Alex shoulders his demons (and all his new ones as well) and knows that he can never let them crush him, otherwise the firework that was his friend will fade into nothing. So no matter how much it hurts, he keeps going. He still can’t bring himself to visit John’s grave. He was buried at home in South Carolina, something Alex knows he would have hated, and it almost seems like a betrayal to go there to pay his respects. (Or maybe that’s just what he tells himself, and the truth is going to see John would break him.)

\--

Alex never used to dream, but he dreams now. Mostly, they are dark, full of nameless terrors and shadows that wake him, screaming. But sometimes, he dreams of another world entirely. A world where John lived, and Alex lived, and they both escaped from this school together and went to college. He dreams of the friends he would make there, friends he would never fear loosing because of who he loved. There were always four of them in his dreams, himself and John and two more, strangers yet Alex felt safer with them than he had ever felt before. It is these dreams that are the worst, because when Alex wakes, in that moment between sleep and waking, he can convince himself that it’s real. Then the grey light of day comes crashing in and he has to face the truth. It’s not real and he will never have that life. Perhaps in another world he does, but here there is nothing but the sound of the wind when he thinks about the future. Nightmares, he can cope with. It’s so much harder when you’re living one.

\--

This is his life. He hides, and he shoulders, and he still weeps into his pillow most nights, but he gets up and does it all again anyway. This is the price of living, his penance for his heart beating on when it deserves to have stopped. His reward for failing the boy who’s face held constellations.

\--

Alex finds his deliverance in writing where he can. Keeps a journal, then a blog. It’s never enough, but words come pouring out of him like crimson from the wrists he still finds himself starring at on occasion. After a while he realises that he is living for the words. He doesn't know what will be left when they are all gone, the last paragraph flown free like a caged bird, but he suspects it will similar to the emptiness you feel after you’ve finished crying. A hollowness not unlike a warm embrace.

And, he supposes, that’s not the worst feeling in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
